West Side stories just never end

Sunday

Oct 21, 2012 at 6:00 AMOct 21, 2012 at 6:55 AM

Dianne Williamson

OK, let’s admit we’re all tempted to poke fun at the distraught West Side residents who are reacting like headless but privileged chickens over plans to improve the busy intersection at Forest and Salisbury streets.

But let’s cut these people some slack, shall we? How would you like it if the city made it easier for the Holden riffraff to drive past your house? Can Forest Street withstand the expected onslaught of late model Lexus SUVs, defaced with all those “My child made the honor roll” bumper stickers?

I was planning to ignore this “controversy” for three reasons: 1. I know some of these residents, and they’re perfectly sane under normal circumstances; 2. It’s just about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard; and 3. I was planning to write about state Rep John J. Binienda’s claim that he was the “Clerk” at the American Legion when he was actually only a bartender. (Slogan idea for campaign brochure: “Beer Doesn’t Pour Itself, You Know”).

But then I read an aggrieved neighbor’s account in another publication that we’re not supposed to acknowledge — OK, it was Worcester Magazine — and I just had to check out this guy myself to make sure the weekly hadn’t invented him for kicks.

Turns out, he’s real. A retired teacher named Luis. I won’t reveal his whole name because I plan to make fun of him and he’s a private citizen, as opposed to a public figure like, say, Mr. Binienda, who has developed a thick skin after serving in the state Legislature since approximately the dawn of time.

Anyway, according to the weekly, Luis only learned of the insidious Forest-Salisbury road project “when his Chihuahua started barking one day for no apparent reason,” which is outrageous, because everyone knows that Chihuahuas pride themselves on barking for no apparent reason. It’s like, their job. If such a post existed, Chihuahuas would be the “Clerks” of unreasonably barking dogs.

But Luis has a point — abutters didn’t learn of the project until surveyors started pounding stakes into yards. The city admitted it goofed and failed to notify the neighbors, but it’s not as though they woke up to a four-lane interstate in their backyard. It’s a road improvement project. It’s a good thing, West Siders! Like Mitt Romney becoming president and eliminating your capital gains tax!

Listen to the neighbors, though, and the West Side hasn’t been under such siege since the former Tatnuck Bookseller obtained a beer and wine license for its indoor café. At a public meeting Oct. 2, abutters complained that the project will increase traffic, speeding, crime, litter, noise pollution and insomnia, and will most certainly result in the additional barking of Luis’ Chihuahua for no apparent reason. Luis, for his part, smells a conspiracy and has been busy snapping pictures of the engineers from behind his bushes.

“There is something further; there is something more than this,” he claimed.

Department of Public Works Commissioner Robert L. Moylan Jr. tried to downplay the impact of the monthlong project, which starts tomorrow. But how is it fair that the city dump all of its road improvement projects on beleaguered Salisbury Street? What’s next? Tree replantings?

“What we’re doing is making modest improvements at a modest cost,” he said. “There are no land-takings. Everyone’s going to get a new sidewalk. It’s like, what is there to complain about? I was shocked at the opposition and level of rhetoric from the opposition.”

Allow me to offer a modest proposal. How about if the city moves the road improvement project to Main South, and a social service agency locates a sober house for Level 3 sex offenders at Forest and Salisbury streets?

In lieu of that idea, I suggest that these West Side whiners find a real problem and get themselves a life. Or at least a quieter dog.